Peer-to-Peer Social Networks:
MyZone

Today's popular social networks
employ a centralized client-server architecture that
introduces two key problems:

the privacy of user
data is at the mercy of the social network
provider, who can mine all the user's data
stored on the social network provider's
server

if the connection between
the server and the social network provider is
severed, or if the server goes down, then all
social network features are lost, such as
posting messages on walls, etc.

We believe that a peer-to-peer social network offers a
better solution for social networking. It has
the advantages that:

the privacy of user data
is preserved, in that the data is not stored at
an unknown social network provider's server, but
instead is stored on a user's own desktop,
laptop, tablet, and mobile devices, and can also
be stored on the devices of trusted friends

there is no central point
of failure, i.e. in a client-server model the
system fails if the connection to the server
fails or if the server itself fails. In a
P2P model, the distributed social network can
continue to exchange messages if any one peer
fails or a connection to a peer fails,
especially if we permit mirroring of profiles
among a users' devices and/or friends' devices.

As a result, we have a built a P2P
social network called MyZone. You can join
MyZone by going to joinmyzone.com
and download/install the software. It should
work on any desktop with Java support. We are
working on a mobile Android version. Our work
has been published as follows: